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Samsung eyeing the Galaxy S8's iris scanner for secure financial transactions

A new report suggests that Samsung may extend the possibilities of its Galaxy S8's iris scanner to financial transactions.
By
April 21, 2017

In the future, the Samsung Galaxy S8’s iris scanner may not be used just to unlock your phone’s screen — a report from The Korea Herald suggests that Samsung wants to utilise the new feature to authenticate financial transactions too.

There are currently a few ways to unlock your new Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8+, such as a with a PIN, fingerprint scanner, pattern or password. But this year, Samsung upped its game with facial recognition and iris scanning technology.

Facial recognition itself debuted in 2011 with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and was criticized back then for being insecure. There are still questions regarding how secure it is as a method for unlocking your phone even now, but iris scanning said to be extremely secure.

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Samsung now appears to be targeting this for secure payments (and likely Samsung Pay) in South Korea, but it’s not certain whether this would make its way to other territories or when it might arrive.

Would you be comfortable using iris scanning tech for transactions? Let us know in the comments.